Do we need tech levels?

I know where this is going to go, nord you're very attached to this idea so I'm just going to abstain from this particular topic of discussion.

Mike

Nord, go play Earth 2150/2160, they do pretty much exactly what you expect. Play it multiplayer a few times and you will see it ends up much like WoW - everybody minmaxes resulting in the one most effective configuration for a given role.

Woah, wait. Customized units? In a world of pre-patterned ultimate death machines? Nope. Not gonna happen. I could attempt a long winded post, but it basically boils down to "It doesn't belong in this type of game". New units will come in the form of mods, not from a mid-game mech lab.

Only ONE unit is a candidate for custom combat upgrades, and even that can be avoided if it has a clever enough array of options.

Attached to which idea, exactly?
Idea of unit customization in vanilla game? Nope, not at all - I still think, that vanilla game should operate predefined units.
Idea of that being modded? Absolutely. Actually, every idea should be modded, as it's only way to check it's real value.
Idea that game design should go prior visible design? Absolutely. Imagination and inspiration are not very reliable.
Idea that this is one of the best ways to design units? Again - yes.

Thanks for supporting my point. That's exactly what we want - most effective configuration for a given role! We found it, we designed it, we modded it into normal game. New idea "what if we will make X possible"? Make a part and relaunch process. Got new unit for role? Replace old one and be happy.

Also, I should note, that it will not also generate (though error&trial) best known configurations for given roles, but also all valuable roles too - which is cool stuff too.

Again, this is suggested as mod. Second - it would not be possible to customize units in-game. It could be even separate program, if integrating such functionality into game engine would be hard. You just got a number of slots and you may just fill them with any customized units prior battle. Once battle started - you got your set and you fight with it. It's like card deck from Magic The Gathering.

[/quote]
neutrino already hinted that it would be possible to replace outfit of one ACU to other ACU, leaving ACU model choice purely aesthetic. And it may just happed to be done with similar mechanics, not with simple checkbox.

Actually, if you allow pre-battle configuration of your ACU, you may disable in-game upgrades, yeap. If you lost because of missing option - next battle you'll switch it one.

This is really a thread?

100% this. TA4Life proves his godlike knowledge of RTS once again.

Anyone who thinks tech levels should be eliminated should immediately stop posting, remove SupCom2 from their drives and go play Forged Alliance on FAF.

No tiers are better than poorly designed tiers.

Don't be naively optimistic in thinking that tier-ification is a golden hammer that will make a game perfect.

Maybe then it's worth discussing how to make non-"poorly designed" tiers instead of just saying "It's dumb, just kill tiers. Because if FA they wasn't so good" at each second post into this thread? We got that, thanks. Start be constructive, please.

I've discussed exactly that many times over.

No tiers are better than poorly designed tiers, but well designed tiers are better than no tiers, imo.
And the more tiers the more depth is added. The problem is time and money. Do they have the time to develop the engine capable of 3D worlds with the depth of multiple tiers. I am unsure :S

"Well designed tiers being better than no tiers" is a completely separate issue to "more tiers the more depth added."

I am going to agree 100% with the first statement, but disagree on the second. I disagree on the basis that you're asserting it as necessarily true. If it were necessarily true, then 100 tiers would be better than 10 tiers, and 1000 tiers would be better than both of them - extending on ad nauseum. It would be simply be a matter of developer time+money to make it work.

No, more potential for depth is added with more tiers. The upper limit of depth comes down to the roles of units needed.

There are three things you need to consider when it comes to tiers of units.

1. The number of viable roles for units to exist in.
2. Whether you have redunancy (doubling up of units doing the same job) in those roles.
3. The proportion of unit types in each tier, compared to the sum of unit types.

Everything has its place, and there is a place for everything. A unit does a job. It's a pan-galactic war, where you either win, or die trying. The tools of your trade all serve a purpose. If they don't serve a purpose, then they don't belong in your toolkit. You can't invent a screwdriver if there's nobody who invented screws. Forget using the screwdriver to pry things apart - you have a crowbar for that.


Or do you invent the screwdriver anyway; knowing that you have crowbars, and that crowbars are damn good at prying things apart? This is redundancy. Why should you burden a player with the dilemma of choice? Especially when one option is superior to the other.

Do you deliberately want to have a trap/pitfall for lower-skilled players to fall into? Is this how you sort out who is the better player? Because that sounds like equating player skill to wrote-learning, and outright memorisation of facts. Winning should be determined by how well you play, not how much you've studied and how much you remember.

I think extra units that fill existing roles are bad, and I believe FA was a good example of this. When you have extra units (redundancy) players will naturally choose the better/best option of the lot. In FA, this usually wound up being the units that could compress the most damage-per-esquare-foot of terrain.

If you think redundancy is a good thing: please make an argument to convince myself, or anyone interested.


Finally, the smallest number of tiers you can have is... one. That's obvious, just put all of them into one great pile.

Conversely, you can't have more tiers than units... because a tier must have a minimum of one unit. The more units you have in total, the more tiers you can possibly get away with.

This is not redundancy, that's an evolution. Consider this as having button "upgrade damage and armor for 1 point for all units" in StarCraft. It doesn't change role (FA messed with that and that lead to confusion, right - each tier takes units from previous tier and then replace some roles with upgraded versions). Upgraded versions should be really upgraded - i.e. they should be more expensive, but better than previous version.

Like "light tank MK1", "light tank MK2", "light tank MK3" and soon.

Some units may appear only from particular tier (not tier 1). If you have a plenty roles overall (including specialized roles like in "basic=>advanced units") than you got diversity without redundancy.

Tiers are good for early game (as they are not only units) and how much tiers controls how long is this "early" game. Without tiers it would be simple RTS with control points, named "metal deposits" for some reason.

Controlling mexes TA for long time would no give you any advantage, while in SupCom it would.

That's the reason for tiers - not units diversity (which would lead to confusion between almost identical situational if it's too much), but strategy diversity for early game.

After entering next stage you left with only last tier, with all unit roles unlocked and with most powerful units per role.

Which means they do the exact same job... but do a better job of it. That's exactly what I think we should be avoiding.

Yes, and the lower the number of tiers the shorter the "early game" is, leaving more room for the "main" game.

...other than the resources it produces. If you're trying to say "controlling mexes *in TA for *a long time would *not give you any increasing advantage" then I'll agree with you.

Still, owning a mex does give you an advantage.

*sentence and grammar, because at at least one us should communicate properly.


Now, I have absolutely no clue in hell why you quoted that line and didn't actually make an argument why redundancy is a good thing. You talked about everything except that.

Wha... guh... ugh. There's no point trying to reply to this. :|
Learn what it means for a unit to be "redundant", because there is a clear disconnect between what it means and what you think it means.

Yes, I mean exactly that - it's not a big deal to lose a single mex in TA and it could be a tragedy in SupCom.

Yeah, thanks. Last part shows that you don't actually want to seriously consider any further arguments, so you may just skip that.

=>

Nope, I talked about exactly that. You just didn't noticed that. Because I think that this "early game" is fun an important part of "main game" and you think that it's not. That's the difference.

Oh, really? There is a special meaning of redundancy for units? I don't think so. Redundancy is either exact duplicate of some subsystem, or some additional information that serves as helper to main information.

How exactly something doing the same, but better is redundancy?

Well, jet air is redundancy over good-old biplanes?
Modern tanks are redundancy over WWII tanks?

I dunno, maybe you think that this all is a little bit far fetched, but maybe a new CPU you are going to buy for PA is redundancy over your current one?

A lot of RTS has an option for evolving your units in different direction, either by building special building or by researching something, or both.

FA is mostly built around evolution, end-game when it's over is a boring number crunching (my N units more than your X units) in most cases or microcontrol fight. In FA early game is main game and end-game is a bad addition.

And now you want to radically change that to make end-game a main game and completely remove early-game. That's wouldn't end well. A lot of people never ever played SupCom2 just because of too radical changes over SupCom. And same people are still playing Starcraft at same time.

I didn't realise I was backing the next Civilization game and not Planetary Annihilation by Uber Entertainment.

Because in a RTS, you enhance a unit's role by building more units with the same role. If a unit can be described as "X, but better", then it fills a redundant strategic role. A tank is a tank is a tank.

That's odd, people seem to be rising for the cause of making units useless again as the game progresses ala FA. Why should devs waste time making the exact same unit twice, except with scaled stats?

I think Supreme Commanders tech levels were pretty bad at launch but the way its handled now in FAF is pretty spot on. A match that isn't even is going to end at tech 1 much like TA. When you've got a really even match then the other levels become necessary.

TA was really fun despite being mostly tech 1. The other tech levels are good for making the late game (which shouldn't come up in most matches) more diverse and interesting but not there as a matter of course that people should feel forced to go to to have a hope of winning.

I haven't a clue how this is all going to work with multiple planets anyway. You could have different techs going on on different planets, much like you might have in SupCom/TA on different islands. They'll have to come up with a totally different application anyway.

Aaaand that's a wrap. Nightnord actually doesn't know what a redundancy is.

I want to consider your arguments. I don't want to spent my time deciphering your words. The more of one I do, the less of the other is done.

Honestly, redundancy is the single most easy way of stringing out a game far longer than it would normally last. It's a very lazy way of elongating game play time without a whole lot of development. In short it's a complete cop out.

Players are essentially playing the same game two or three times over depending on which tech level they achieve. This isn't necessary and nor is it good for PA.

Tech levels are still necessary, but more from a stand point of structures than units IMO. Tech levels can be used to limit the technology available to the player and therefore determine what strategies are available to him at a particular stage in the game. Regarding units, it is possible with two tech levels - as explained several times in this topic - to have two tiers of units that have no redundancy simply by having general purpose and specialist units. There is no need what so ever for there to be any overlap between the two.

Escalation in SupCom was different than it will be in PA. in SupCom, advancing to the next tech level is all that players can do to escalate. In PA, unlocking T2 will be no less of an escalation. However, advancing to orbital will be a much more significant milestone IMO. Not to mention that every time a player moves to a new planet. Making the jump in to space is a huge escalation compared to teching up in SupCom and is really what sets PA apart from its predecessors.

IMO that is what PA is about. Scale. Huge scale games with thousands of units. Why as a developer would I make a huge battlefield like a galaxy and then make it so that the cost of the players units scale with the duration of the game? All this will do is limit the numbers of units a player will build because he is always trying to make his opponents units redundant. Instead, why not make it so that players are encouraged to field increasingly larger numbers of units? Why not make it so that players are encouraged to concentrate more on manoeuvres and unit combinations?

If the two tiers of units are made diverse enough, the strategic and tactical options that are available to the player are far greater than having the same number of units that are made redundant twice over. Weight for weight, with redundancy you just end up with only a third of the units available to you at the end of the game. That is what it boils down to.